There is a very clear contradiction in how physical injuries are supposed to be handled in the Players Handbook and the Mission Book. Here is what the Mission Book says about how injuries work:

Mission Book wrote:Once you're at a level, any lesser wound has no effect.

So, if you're Injured and get Hurt by something, you stay at Injured. This makes sense because when you have already lost a limb or are otherwise severely injured, then someone basically lightly punching you shouldn't kill you, surely.

Players Handbook wrote:If you're Injured and you get Hurt again, you are now Maimed.

This directly contradicts the Mission Book. However, this also makes sense because when you're up against something that can only, say, Hurt or Injure you, then you shouldn't be essentially immune against dying to it. This also makes it much easier to adjudicate because you really can't expect PCs to roll three successes above the difficulty (a "Maimed" injury) to be able to kill someone. Not to mention that the health boxes for the NPCs given in the Mission Book don't specify which of the boxes stand for "Hurt", "Injured" or "Maimed".
Also, the Players Handbook talks about "levels of damage" when doing damage, but that term is never explained. If a PC is doing two "levels of damage", does that mean that the target gets Injured (crossing off boxes until the first Injured one or going from Injured to Maimed)? Or does it simply always cross off two boxes from the target's health?

This actually makes a huge difference and I would like to know how that is supposed to work. The former, as stated, doesn't easily work because where on the NPC's health boxes does "Injured" start? At the second one? The third one? If the NPCs have more than four health boxes, that isn't actually entirely clear. Not to mention the implications for PC versus PC combat.

Yes, I know, the answer could well be "just make something up", but surely, the rules are there for a reason and having very obvious contradictions in them makes it hard to wrap my head around how combat is even supposed to work.

NPCs have wound boxes, like PCs, but they’re not
stuck with four like Troubleshooters are. Are they super-tough? Let them double
up at a particular level: they can get Injured twice, or Maimed twice. Are they weak
and wheedling? One hit and they’re toast. Is there a big crowd of them? Save
yourself time and stick an extra wound box on for each member of the team. (If
your NPC has armour, note it down here.)

So, you give the NPC's the number of boxes and you decide what the damage is.
Level of damage adds to the existing amount of damage. (Mainly because NPCs don't have the same damage counters that the players do.)

Last edited by Shai on Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm just about to run my first Paranoia session this weekend, and while reviewing all of the books I too noticed this contradiction.

My thoughts are actually that the Player's Handbook makes more sense where you add 1 "level" of damage if you take damage at a level equal to or lower than your current damage level. I interpret "level" to mean one check box. The logic here is that if you're injured (2 levels of damage) and you become Hurt (1 level of damage,) you're not invincible to more damage just because you're already damaged.

So, if you're Injured and get Hurt by something, you stay at Injured. This makes sense because when you have already lost a limb or are otherwise severely injured, then someone basically lightly punching you shouldn't kill you, surely.

Part of the confusion here is that the label "Hurt" does not mean "someone lightly punching you," but is a conceptual representation of a certain loss of health. If each PC has four health boxes, than each box can be thought of as representing 25% of your health (the representational percentage varies per NPC). So if you're Maimed, it mechanically means you've lost 75% of your health, and if you become hurt by "someone lightly punching you," then yes that is another 25% off your health, which means you're dead.